Jason Grote, the straight white male playwright who thought I was ridiculous some years ago for suggesting that women are given fewer play productions than men - and blocked me from his "Fortress" for disagreeing with him - is a big fan of the leading brocialist Doug Henwood. He likes to retweet him often.
Henwood of course also blocked me for disagreeing with him - on Facebook and Twitter. Brocialists don't like bitches who are non-compliant.
But how perfect a confluence is that? Two men I despised as misogynists - separately - long before this current nomination process turn out to be brocialist comrades attacking a woman running for president - a prospect that fills them with rage and compels them to smear Clinton and supporters with easily-debunked bullshit - Whitewater in Henwood's case and unfounded attacks on progressive hero David Brock in Grote's case.
And Doug Henwood just cannot stop attacking Katha Pollitt, his fellow writer at The Nation. I gave Pollitt a heads-up on this article on Facebook.
Henwood apparently thinks he's accomplished some kind of gotcha but I don't see anything written in this review of Clinton's "It Takes a Village" that sound different from Pollitt now. She never claimed that she thought Hillary Clinton was perfect. And the review starts out with a paragraph that is still very valid, especially with brocialists on the attack:
“Saint or Sinner?” asks the cover of Newsweek about Hillary Clinton. On the New York Times Op-Ed page, Maureen Dowd calls her a hybrid of Earth Mother and Mommie Dearest. I must say, I don’t see what all the fuss is about. Don’t countless politicians (and their relatives) use their positions to make profitable contacts and advance their friends? And don’t they all talk about family, morals, responsibility, children and God?
Henwood attacks Gail Collins too.
And we know exactly what kind of feminism the brocialists believe in because Henwood explains:
As I wrote in My Turn (p. xiv): “The side of feminism I’ve studied and admired for decades has been about moving towards that ideal [of a more peaceful, more egalitarian society], and not merely placing women into high places while leaving the overall hierarchy of power largely unchanged. It’s distressing to see feminism pressed into service to promote the career of a thoroughly orthodox politician—and the charge of sexism used to deflect critiques of her.In other words, the side of feminism that Henwood admires isn't actually about WOMEN.
Can you imagine if someone wrote: "the side of civil rights I've studied and admired is about peace and egalitarianism, not about placing African Americans into high places." And civil rights activists being called "bourgeois" if they talk about advancing the careers of African Americans. It's only OK to attack women for having aspirations in the here and now - rather than waiting for the egalitarian peaceful socialist nirvana to render 9 to 5 jobs obsolete.
But of course Susan Sarandon demonstrates how women can never win in a world run by brocialist values - she supported John Kerry AND John Edwards who both voted to go into Iraq. But she "broke up" with HRC over the same thing. And the reason for that is clear in this recent New Yorker interview with her:
She talked about Clinton, whom she had earlier described as a good Republican candidate. “I hold women to a very high moral standard,” she said. “I was very disappointed when she voted for the war, so easily, especially as I was suffering so much, and my family was suffering”—pilloried for their opposition to the war.
Clearly there is a blatant and unapologetic double standard in the minds of brocialists: women must be purer than men.
Brocialists like their women to be earth mothers who make sure to take care of everybody else and certainly not to try to have a place in the upper ends of the hierarchy like that pushy bitch HRC who thinks she's entitled to the nomination just by getting the most votes. Sanders and his enablers think that they can get the nomination by getting superdelegates to switch over to Sanders. Because they're assholes like that.
And that is why brocialists must be opposed every damn step of the way and their attempt to take over the American left at the expense of women must be called out as much as possible.